Its been two weeks and I couldn’t share much other than posting few photos on facebook or twitter.

We were introduced to practica. All we knew about practica was this, “Practica are term-length, site-based, applied learning courses. They draw on real-life cases and working problems that are situated in the city. Fellows will be provided with a problem situation (together with extensive written and audio-visual information) regarding a city or a particular site in Bangalore. Working in teams as well as individually, the Practica will help Fellows apply principles of integrating theory, practice and link skills and concepts learnt in the classroom to develop solutions. In doing so, they will develop problem-solving skills as well as capacity to create innovative & sustainable solutions that will help them translate knowledge into application and then impact, in the Indian context. The Practica will also allow participants to interact with and be evaluated by critical stakeholders in the city – like government officials, entrepreneurs and civil society organizations”.
Source: UFP website

This is what we’ve read on the urban fellowship programme website. We were told about our sites in Bangalore. 10 teams were formed of 3 fellows each. We proceeded to our sites – Sultanpalya & Malleswaram. 5 teams were to work in Sultanpalya and 5 teams in Malleswaram. What we did and what we were suppose to do, I’ll write about that next time, probably.

Sharing some of the photos from Malleswaram. The team I was part of was suppose to work in Malleswaram.

As a part of our Practica we will be working in our neighbourhood. This short film is from the first visit that we had last week. There are two sites in the neighbourhood on which we are suppose to work. This film is from Malleswaram, Bangalore.

Malleswaram is a north-western neighbourhood in Bangalore city. It was developed as a planned suburb after the great plague of 1898, which caused many people to move out of the city center. It derives its name from the Kaadu Malleshwara temple.

Third day in IIHS, BCC was dedicated to Media Lab. We were to walk around in the neighborhood with open spaces. We were to get the portrait of people of this city; how they identify this city, how they are emotionally connected to it and how they react to it. Primarily, this is what we were suppose to do. We were suppose to get the stories of people of Bangalore so that we can understand and know this city better.

So we set out in teams of 4-5 fellows, each team with a Kannada speaking member who could bridge the language gap. We left IIHS at 8:30 am equipped with our cameras and some strategies in our minds as to how will we talk to people outside.

We were group Number 3 – Chandni Arun Narendra, Jayati, Ratnam & TejInder(me). We walked down the streets of Sadashiva Nagar and got out to the Bellary road. We spoke to people who have been living in Bangalore from 2 months to those who’ve been here since 40 years. They were new to us like the city is, and we were new to them. What followed the conversation was a small phot0-video documentation process where we asked them if we can take pictures of them.

The maximum we spoke to anyone was 15 minutes, it was our first interaction with them and we kept it short. We had tea and some food at a road side stall and made our way back to IIHS. We were the first group to be back at 12:15 pm. Gautam almost sent us back but didn’t on seeing little snippet of what we had done(I don’t know what changed his mind).

What followed was an hour of discussion on how would we want to present what we did. Most of the people at IIHS were expecting that we’ll do some portraits of people. We did that but we did not presented the photographs in our story telling.

However, I’ll share photos here. Some of the portraits of the city and space I made during this morning walk. I won’t tell you who they were and what there stories were. I’ll let you interpret in your own way.

p.s: I’ll share our presentation sometime soon, maybe.

(L-R)Chandni Arun Narendra, Ratnam, Jayati

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